No Recycling of Cut Content in FFXIII-2

One of the biggest misconceptions about Final Fantasy XIII was that SquareEnix had to cut content out of the game to squeeze it onto the Xbox 360. Sony fanboys just love bringing that up when, in reality, this happens to each and every game – multi-plats, exclusives, whatever. It’s kind of like filming 58 minutes of an hour TV show (which is only about 42-43 minutes after commercial breaks) only to have to cut out 15 minutes because it’s too long.

In an interview with Xbox World 360, a U.K. publication, Final Fantasy XIII-2 director Yoshinori Kitase went on record as saying they are not using anything they cut from FFXIII in the sequel. In fact, everything was created from the ground up. Obviously, there will likely be some assets carried over, some textures, some models even – but nothing that was cut from FFXIII will end up in the game.

I think those comments have been really badly misinterpreted. The fact is that when making any game you need to come up with lots of different ideas and designs that you weigh up against each other before picking the best one. Obviously in that process a lot of ideas and designs have to be discarded. We have never knowingly picked up these kind of ideas and recycled them. That’s not what we do. It’s natural for anyone making games to throw away ideas but the scenario of FFXIII-2 is completely newly written and has no connection to anything we didn’t use for FFXIII.

So, no more crying from you Sony fanboys about cutting content, no more conspiracy theories – just sit back and enjoy the frakking game, which is, apparently, being built from the ground up for the sequel. Final Fantasy XIII-2 is due out in January for both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Chad joined the DualShockers staff in mid 2009 and since then has put much of his time into covering RPGs, with a focus on the Japanese side of the genre, from the obscure to the mainstream. He's a huge fan of iconic games like Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy VI and Persona 4 yet enjoys the smaller niche titles, as well. In his spare time he enjoys experiencing new beer, new foods and keeping up with just about every sci-fi show on television. He's married to an intelligent, beautiful Southern Belle who keeps his life interesting with witty banter and spicy Cajun cooking.